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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



the eastward. As the popuhition l)e- 

 came denser, it encroached more and 

 more upon the hind covered with the 

 pitch pine, and as the soil of this re- 

 gion was less productive, and in many 

 cases poor, the settlers began to look 

 upon it as barren, hence tlie epithet 

 "Pine Barrens." 



The influence that this Ijarren pine 

 land had on the inhabitants of the re- 

 gion was soon seen in the local indus- 

 tries. Throughout the '"pines,'' the 

 sawmills, driven by water power, her- 

 alded the advent of permanent settle- 

 ment. These mills were erected first in 

 tlie period 1700-35. The pitch pine is 

 the tree which gives character to the 

 Pine Barrens of southern Xew Jersey, 

 and with it is sometimes associated the 

 yellow pine. The pitch pine satisfied 

 the needs of the settlers for the sills 

 and beams of buildings. As compared 

 with modern logging, the methods of 

 cutting and handling the logs in tlie 

 forest were simple. Horse and ox- 

 teams sufficed to transport the logs to 

 the sawmill. As the country was level 

 and flat, no insuperable difheulties were 

 presented in getting the logs out of the 

 woods, especially if the lumbering was 

 done when the ground was frozen or 

 covered with snow. Also turpentine, 

 resin, tar, and charcoal were obtained 

 from the pitch pine tree. Fat pine 

 knots were used as a substitute for 

 lamps and candles in the early days l)y 

 splitting the knots into thin splints. 

 The white cedar of the swamps yielded 

 a fine grade of lumber for vats, tanks, 

 churns, buckets, and firkins. Shingles 

 were made from white cedar, and these 

 shingles covered many of the houses 

 built in New Jersey in the last cen- 

 tury. Aside from the forests, an im- 

 portant industry arose in southern 

 New Jersey through the cultivation of 

 the native cranberry, for which a large 



demand has developed in the United 

 States. 



There are several types of pine 

 l)arren vegetation : ^ the pine forest 

 proper, the cedar swamp vegetation, 

 the deciduous swamps, the savannahs, 

 the bogs, and the plains. The tree 

 which makes up the bulk of the New 

 Jersey pine forest is the pitch pine. In 

 old stands of pine the average height 

 of trees from ten to fourteen inches in 

 diameter is about fifty feet. Where fire 

 has destroyed the original forest, the 

 pine trees are stunted and reach only a 

 height of about twenty feet. The un- 

 dergrowth in the pine forest consists of 

 several species of dwarf oaks, the sassa- 

 fras, sweet ferns, blueberries, huckle- 

 berries, sand myrtles, and laurels. The 

 tall herbs are goat's-rue, lupine, wild 

 indigo, and various grasses. The plants 

 of the forest floor are bearberry, trailing 

 arbutus, wintergreen, and pyxie. As 

 the ])lants of the heath family, such as 

 tiie laurels, huckleberries, and blueber- 

 ries, form numerically the largest part 

 of the undergrowth, the pine barren 

 forest forms what the European plant 

 geographies call a "pine heath," and 

 this comparison of American with Eu- 

 ropean vegetation is heightened in a 

 study of the plains of the central part 

 of the state, for here are hills covered 

 with forests of dwarf — "elfin," or 

 "pigmy" — pitch pines and oaks, with 

 laurel, and other shrubs. These plants 

 owe their dwarfed condition to a hard- 



^ The history of the New Jersey pine barren 

 region begins with the formation of the marginal 

 plain known as the "pre-Pensauken peneplain," 

 covered with a fairly iiniform vegetation. With 

 the beginning of the Pleistocene, part of the Atlan- 

 tic coastal plain was depressed, but an island, 

 representing the Beacon Hill formation, remained 

 covered by the remnant of the ancient coastal plain 

 vegetation. Pensauken Island was separated from 

 the mainland by Pensauken Sound, and when the 

 land emerged again, the pine barren vegetation 

 occupied an area coincident with the outline of 

 Pensauken Island, retaining these boundaries up 

 to the present, as a new vegetation surrounded 

 that of the Pine Barrens. 



